


Concrete Rivers

by churchofniccals



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Angst, Angst and Humor, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Questioning, The End of the World, russ and 2D are besties
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25717801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/churchofniccals/pseuds/churchofniccals
Summary: At the end of the world, two boys find a reason to live.
Relationships: Murdoc Niccals/Stuart "2D" Pot
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Concrete Rivers

Russel Hobbs and 2D made the roads Concrete Rivers was built on. This was before they grew out of their affliction with BMX bicycles and Dr Pepper, and the constant back-and-forth ruts that they cut through just became the natural sweep of Garston Drive, as though the dirt graders and street engineers couldn’t help but follow the same tracks that they had laid, and so Concrete Rivers was birthed.  
The shopping centre went up, built like a row of happy lower teeth, grinned for a while, and then about a year or maybe a few months later, some of the shops started to shut down, blackening out like cavities when the news started going wild.  
BMX riding was for middle schoolers, but they still kept their bikes and 2D recalled times when they had pondered over digging them out of his cobweb ridden shed, just to know how it would feel to ride them through Concrete Rivers again. But it didn’t feel right. Now they were in high school and rode skateboards, and wherever they couldn’t skate, they would be able to sneak away in Russel’s old van. By the end of year twelve, Russ could drive, although not very well, and it quickly became very convenient for both of them.  
Maybe that was when it had started. When the bikes turned into skateboards turned into cars. 

On the Wednesday of the first week, after school was cancelled, Russel and 2D took their boards out to Concrete Rivers. The tracks in the mud were still there, as they seemingly always had been, weaving down the back alley like intestinal tapeworms. Nobody cared about skaters anymore, and nobody cared about the four remaining shops that had managed to stay open in the shopping centre after everything else had shut down: the laundromat, the liquor shop, the diner, and Pot’s, 2D’s father’s independent grocery store. So they could skate there, and pretty much do whatever they wanted to.  
Judging by the smashed green glass, empty beer cans, and the pungent smell of piss in the alley, it seemed as though their code of misconduct spread throughout Crawley, too. That proved to be an unfortunate fact for 2D and Russel on that Wednesday.  
They had built ramps from sagging flaps of plywood that they had laid across a flight of concrete steps behind a vacant unit that used to be a foot doctor.

“Bad business plan,” Russel said, kicking the wood with his rather large shoe.  
“What?”  
“Fixing people’s feet in a town everyone’s begging to run away from.” 

Russel was so smart that it sometimes hurt 2D’s head to think about how sad he could be. 

“We should go into business,” 2D said and sat himself down on one of the upturned empty milk crates and pulled the pack of cigarettes from his jean pocket. “Want a fag?”

Russel crouched beside him and slid one out, popping it between his lips. There was a sofa down the alley, but it was covered in moth holes and they had once joked about how it was infested with pubic lice. Which could very well be true. So they settled for the milk crates and sat with their elbows resting on their knees while they propped their feet on their boards and rocked them back and forth like they were floating over invisible waves.  
Russel was a better smoker. He could inhale deep, thick clouds of cigarette smoke and blow life-sized ghost models while he’d casually lean back and exhale. 2D wasn’t sure if he would smoke at all if it wasn’t for Russ. 

“What kind of business?” Russel said.  
“I dunno. Keyboards. I could sing stuff. Music.”  
“And I could play them for you.” Russel took a big drag from his cigarette. “I’d be your drummer or something.”

Both of them had discovered their early obsession with music at a young age when 2D’s father played his dad rock for them at sleepovers - although Russel was always more into hip hop. 2D liked to clatter about with keyboards, making up simple but memorable tunes, and in one corner of his wardrobe, stacked in a pile that reached from the bottom of his leg to the top of his thigh, was a pile of binders and composition notebooks, documenting everything he had ever written. However, it had all seemed unlikely, the thought that this would amount to anything. And now, judging by the state of the world, even less so. 

2D supposed that Concrete River had become an escape for all of that. It always had been an escape, whether it was from family or school, or just somewhere to get high. 

“You’d be the frontman,” Russel said. “You sing, play, and look good at the same time. You’d expect to make good money out of it.”  
“Multitasking.”  
“The shit out of it, Stu.” 

Russel called 2D ‘Stu’ because that’s what he’d always been to him, before the accident. 2D didn’t mind it. Everyone else called him 2D. Two Dents. 

They leaned their backs into the cinder block wall, smoking in the cut of the shade from a green cut dumpster, and at just about the same time they were about to take their boards to the park, Stu looked up and realized the population of their alleyway had increased uncomfortably. Four boys from the school they attended stared them down from the opposite end of where they were sat.  
“Candy cane faggots, getting ready to make out with each other in Piss Alley.”

The candy cane thing - that was what they would call them. Not just because it had a ring to it, but because of a scene in the year five Christmas play, that may or may not have involved little Stu Pot and Russel in candy cane costumes engaging in a rather feisty number about Santa’s workshop. It wasn’t like they were big enough losers to not regret that. But that was middle school. 

Russel now wore a Beastie Boys shirt and baggy jeans that he sagged so low you could see half his citrus-motif boxers. He would look fairly unbullyable if he wasn’t technically possessed, and, well, gay. His eyes glowed a creepy white, matching with 2D’s black dents for eyes, which was why they had become friends in the first place after Russel had moved from Brooklyn.  
2D wore a normal shirt and even plainer jeans, but his azure blue hair and lack of eyeballs didn’t exactly help his cause. Together, they made a fairly weird pair.  
The other part - the faggot part - let’s just say 2D got picked on. A lot.

Russel just sat back casually against the wall, puffing away on his cigarette. He did have one thing on his side - he was huge, and from Brooklyn, and most people - the sensible ones - were scared of him. They would never admit it, but 2D only got into bother when Russel wasn’t around. 2D only knew one of the boys’ names - Grant Wallace. It was hard not to know people’s names where they lived, even when you didn’t pay much attention to people as a rule. 

“Let me and Craig borrow your skateboards for a minute, will you? We’ll bring ‘em back.”

Craig must be the long-faced kid on Grant’s closest left, because he nodded all excited, an encouragement for them to be cooperative candy cane faggots. 

But Russel said no, man, before the question had even entirely left Grant’s mouth.  
The truth is, that when kids like Grant ask kids like them to borrow stuff like skateboards, the skateboards are either gonna get stolen, or the kids like them are gonna get beaten up, and then the boards are going to get stolen. The way they get beaten up is when one of them says no. History can prove that one. 

This time, Craig left with a bloody nose. Grant took their boards and chucked them on top of the roof of the dentist’s, followed by a joke about how 2D needed one. A dentist’s, not a skateboard. Clearly. And if Russel hadn’t been so violent, Grant and his goons probably would’ve taken their shoes and thrown them up on the roof, too. But they made such a racket that Dave from the diner popped his head around the door and gave them all the finger. 

Russel felt bad. Not because of Craig’s bloody nose, but because he often blamed himself when things like this happened. 2D watched him cry a bit, and that made him sad. Guilty. There was no reason for kids like Russ to hang around with him, but then again, who else would kids like Russ hang around with?

They recovered. And since it wasn’t time for them to die yet, they had a smoke.

There are many ways to deal with the world ending. Russel’s approach was artistic. As they sat in on the ground of Concrete Rivers, Russel propped himself on the crate and pulled a red marker from his backpack. He wrote on the brick wall in giant letters that took up half a meter each, ‘GRANT WALLACE MURDERED ME’. 

He could be so dramatic sometimes, 2D thought. So quiet, but so bloody dramatic. So he watched and nibbled his fingernails and wondered how their skateboards were doing up there on the roof.

It was dark outside and Concrete Rivers and the rest of the world around it glowed in a mix of blues and blacks and grey. 2D thought about how much he missed the rain, which, recently, felt like a distant childhood memory. 

“Hey, I bet there’s some cool stuff up on that roof,” 2D said.  
“Oh yeah, no doubt everyone hides their cool shit up in skateboard heaven.”  
“Maybe.”


End file.
